So, ignoring the clip show, it seems poor Volcanus Erupts! is generally considered the weakest.

But in the interests of fairness, to those of you who voted for the Kat's Eye News Special Report episode, if you could choose any other episode as the weakest, which one would it have been? Volcanus Erupts! or another one?

I'm agree with most of you, Special Report was the worst. They could at least do a "real" inteview in Megakat Broadcasting Studios using new animations with some from the old episodes. That would be neat.

You know, I actually feel like the special report should be crossed off this list since its more of a special/gimmick and not an episode... and, given that it's not REALLY an episode basically singles it out as the "worst" on the list. If we got rid of it, maybe we'd actually have some debate about which legit episode we found the weakest.

Betaruga wrote:You know, I actually feel like the special report should be crossed off this list since its more of a special/gimmick and not an episode... and, given that it's not REALLY an episode basically singles it out as the "worst" on the list. If we got rid of it, maybe we'd actually have some debate about which legit episode we found the weakest.

Although Betaruga is absolutely right, I've amended my vote to the Kat's Eye News Special Report clip show, if only to give poor Volcanus Erupts! a break.

Volcanus Erupts, on the grounds that it was resolved far too quickly, Volcanus is introduced and dispatched in too short a timeframe, and too easily at that, while Razor's near death felt sort of thrown in.

Second place, SWAT Kats Unplugged. Again, it introduces a new bad guy that gets wrapped up far too quickly, giving us no idea who he was meant to be. Meanwhile, Hard Drive pops up, steals a gadget that disables the weapons on the Turbokat, and the day is saved by a barrel of paint that, for some reason, was inside the Turbokat's cargo/passenger bay.

If they would have stuck with just Chopshop, maybe devoted time to flesh his character out a little more, it might have been a good episode. Without that, he felt like a one off villain that copied the Turbo Blades and had a heavily armored chopper. Given his name, one might expect he was supposed to be like the heroes, making advanced vehicles and weapons from junk vehicles, maybe he even stole stuff from their salvage yard. He has some decent potential, but they opted to give Hard Drive another Surge Suit, a jet with no explanation, and had him wrapped up about as fast as Chopshop.

Leon Mane wrote:Without that, he felt like a one off villain that copied the Turbo Blades and had a heavily armored chopper.

...but, he was just a one-off villain. His sole function was to be a bad guy for the SWAT Kats to defeat at the beginning so we feel like we're joining them mid-story.

The same trick was pulled in The Giant Bacteria with Morbulus and Metal Urgency with Hard Drive. Although, to be fair, unlike Chopshop, Morbulus continued to be involved in the plot and even ended up being turned into the main threat, and Hard Drive could afford to just have a cameo because he was a previously established character.

In any event, since SWAT Kats Unplugged's story is about the anti-weapon scrambler, an easy solution is have Chopshop, not Hard Drive, steal and use it. It'd be effectively the same episode, just with a different beginning and a different method of actually stealing the device (since, obviously, Chopshop can't come through phone lines). The downside, of course, would be no Hard Drive, and he seems like a popular villain. So perhaps another solution would be to keep Chopshop around as Hard Drive's flunkey; like maybe he flies the aircraft so Hard Drive can concentrate on working the anti-weapon doohicky.

Leon Mane wrote:Given his name, one might expect he was supposed to be like the heroes, making advanced vehicles and weapons from junk vehicles, maybe he even stole stuff from their salvage yard.

Well, actually, that's the opposite of a chopshop. Chopshops are where things are dismantled, not built. Hence the name: chopshop i.e. a shop where things are chopped up/taken apart (usually with the aim of selling the individual parts). So, rather than building his own stuff, Chopshop, going by his name, would steal things to take them apart and sell the valuable components. It's probably what he intended to do with that helicopter. Maybe it wasn't originally his and he'd stolen it.